George M. Taber, the author of Judgment of Paris: California vs. France and the 1976 Paris Tasting that Revolutionized Wine (Scribner, September 2005), has interviewed presidents, dictators, corporate tycoons and even the Beatles in a journalism career that lasted more than 40 years. But the most important event he ever covered was a wine tasting in Paris in 1976. Nine eminent French wine experts, in a blind tasting, selected in both the red wine and the white wine competition unknown California wines as better than the best French wines.

It turned out to be the turning point in the history of California wine and launched the globalization of wine that we know today. Food critic Anthony Dias Blue called the event “the most talked about wine tasting of the [20th] century.” At the time Taber was a Paris correspondent for Time magazine, and he was the only journalist at the event, which was staged by an Englishman who owned a wine store and school in Paris. It was Taber’s story in Time that broke the news to the world and caused oenophiles around the world to take their first serious look at California wines.

Taber spent 21 years at Time as a reporter, writer and editor. He had assignments for Time in New York, Bonn, Paris, Houston and Washington, D.C. before being named a senior editor at the magazine. For six years he was Time’s business editor and was later editor of theWorld section. In 1988, Taber left Time to start njbiz, a weekly newspaper that covers New Jersey business. He sold the paper in 2005.

A Californian by birth, which gave him his first interest in wine, Taber graduated from Georgetown University and got a masters degree from the College of Europe in Bruges, Belgium. He now lives on Block Island, Rhode Island with his wife Jean.